The domain names market is all up in the air as it drags itself out of the 1990s.

Just on Thursday, users were allowed to register names with Asian characters – Chinese, Korean and Japanese – for the first time. Sites such as Register.com began letting users type in words, see their equivalent in Asian characters, and register them. According to Chinese Network Solutions CNNIC, 1 million Chinese character names were registered on the first day.

Naseem Javed, author of “Domain Wars,” predicts chaos as Asians transliterate such names as Ford and Microsoft without regard for trademark.

Meanwhile, vast new tracts of cyberspace are to be opened when the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) reviews applications for new domain suffixes this Thursday.

The group is trying to sort out who should administer – and charge money for – new top-level domains such as “.info,” “.web,” “.biz” and “.geo,” to ease the overcrowding in the “.com,” “.net” and “.org” space.

With 47 Web businesses already applying for more than 100 new domains, ICANN is trying to figure out who can be trusted with what – and whether anyone can be trusted with “.kids” and the more adult “.xxx.”

The new TLDs are due to appear next spring.

A new consortium of 19 domain name registrars, which includes the biggies Network Solutions, Register.com and Tucows, has suggested that trademark owners get an exclusive 90-day period to register new domain names, such as coke.info or sony.site.

Others are already protesting that since thousands of common English words are already registered trademarks somewhere, cyberspace will be carved up by corporate interests before the common man can join in. Trademark owners can already take over “.com,” “.net” and “.org” from squatters.

In another twist as the market for names plummets, some owners have begun leasing them. The owners of “Christmas.com” and “London.com” are said to be considering leasing them by the month for promotional purposes, driving traffic to sales and special offers.